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Good news within the federal regulatory leviathan has been depressingly rare, perhaps most of all at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This week, however, brought a remarkably welcome development worthy of celebration.

Specifically, the FCC delayed its vote on a toxic and entirely unwarranted new proposal to regulate cable television set-top boxes before the Obama presidency’s clock expires, in what The Wall Street Journallabeled “a major blow to the proposal” and “a setback to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler on one of his top priorities for the year.”

Even Democrats have attacked the scheme as a “massive new federal regulation,” and CFIF stands alongside a broad coalition of conservative and libertarian organizations in opposition. The initiative from the overactive FCC seeks to impose a one-size-fits all mandate to make cable TV set-top boxes artificially compatible with third-party entertainment devices. So even while cable companies themselves progressively and voluntarily move toward abandoning traditional cable boxes in favor of devices owned and maintained by individual customers as they prefer, Chairman Wheeler hopes to impose a 1990s-style regulation upon the industry. That would essentially freeze in place the increasingly outdated model of set-top cable boxes that is already becoming an anachronism due to market forces. Exacerbating matters, the proposal reeks of crony capitalism, as CFIF has highlighted. The proposal is a confluence of regulatory overreach, technological sclerosis and crony capitalism.

Fortunately, this week’s decision within the FCC to delay a vote due to Wheeler’s apparent inability to persuade fellow Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to his side provides a rare victory against years of FCC regulatory onslaught. Although the bipartisan consensus among consumer groups, Congress, the innovation community and market participants must remain vigilant because the battle isn’t over, it’s welcome news worthy of note and celebration.

CFIF remains vigilant in sounding the alarm about a costly new crony capitalist “Clean Energy Standard” (CES) boondoggle in New York state, and a new report this week from the Empire Center for Public Policy further exposes the destructively high cost that state citizens and businesses will pay under the plan.

The CES is a global warming alarmist scheme unveiled last month by New York’s Public Service Commission (PSC), whose members were appointed by Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo. The plan imposes a draconian demand that at least 50% of the state’s energy will come from carbon-neutral plants like solar and wind by just 14 years from today. The CES plan would compel New York power generators to purchase “Zero Emission Credits” (ZECs) from carbon-neutral generators through a state government bureaucracy, which would in turn be handed to struggling upstate nuclear power plants.

Not only is the plan extremely costly – at least an additional $1 billion in the first two years alone, and an estimated $8 billion over the CES plan’s lifespan – but it amounts to yet another governmental example of crony capitalism because it benefits a single company named Exelon.

Matters only got worse this week for the CES boondoggle when the Empire Center released a report finding that the plan will cost New York consumers $3.4 billion over just the first five years. As summarized by Empire Center analyst Ken Girardin, existing carbon-neutral plants don’t generate nearly enough power to sustain the scheme, and it will also require costly new infrastructure:

The new standard’s goal for solar power would translate into roughly 200 times the capacity of New York’s largest existing utility-grade solar panel farm, which is at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. It also calls for enough new land-based wind turbines to cover, at a minimum, an area the size of Putnam County.

Most of the added solar and land-based wind-generating capacity would have to be located upstate – but nearly two-thirds of the state’s electricity is consumed downstate, and power lines linking the regions aren’t up to the task. In fact, the transmission grid already required extensive upgrades before the new mandate was imposed, as Governor Cuomo acknowledged when he pushed during his first term for grid improvements called ‘the Energy Highway.’ But the highway is stalled, and the Clean Energy Standard doesn’t deal with the issue.

Another problem: solar panels and wind turbines generate power only intermittently, since the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. But the new standard also makes no allowance for energy storage or standby generators powered by conventional sources, which would add further to the cost of a big shift to renewables.”

“It’s one of the biggest tax hikes in state history,” Mr. Girardin noted, “and it’s a hidden tax that they will never see on their bills.”

It’s bad enough that the CES constitutes yet another example of unnecessary crony capitalism perpetrated by the climate change-industrial complex. With the Empire Center exposing just how costly it will be for New York state citizens and businesses, there’s no excuse for failing to stop it before the damage is done.

In an interview with CFIF, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, discusses the history and regulations surrounding drug prices, who should finance important medical advancements, and the continuing Zika threat.

How much more in your monthly utility bill would you be happy to pay to combat global warming? Probably not much, if anything.

Unfortunately, New York state residents are being lectured that they shouldn’t have any choice.

That’s the upshot of a festering crony capitalist utility boondoggle cooked up by state legislators in the name of global warming alarmism, as we at CFIF detailed earlier this month.

By way of refresher, the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) approved a new “Clean Energy Standard” (CES) last month, which requires that carbon-neutral sources account for at least 50% of energy generated in the state by the year 2030. Making matters worse, CES provisions require power companies to buy Zero Emission Credits (ZECs) from a state government bureaucracy to benefit financially struggling upstate nuclear energy plants. Those subsidies guarantee $1 billion for the struggling plants in the first two years of the plan alone, with an estimated $8 billion over the full course of the CES plan.

And these subsidies will reportedly benefit a single company named Exelon, which controls the struggling plants. Think of it as New York’s own little Solyndra boondoggle.

Naturally, the cost of this scheme will fall upon New York residents and businesses, regardless of whether they receive any power from the subsidized nuclear plants upstate.

To their credit, state lawmakers recognized the numerous flaws in the CES plan and spelled them out in a recent letter to PSC Chairwoman Audrey Zibelman, also demanding a more open public accounting.

Chairwoman Zibelman’s response only made matters worse, rationalizing that, “compared to the cost of climate change that we have already experienced in the State, this is a very modest burden”:

Carbon emissions themselves are not geographically bounded. The CES allocates the obligation to meet the 50 percent renewables goals and zero-emission credits to all of the consumers of the State because all consumers will benefit from reducing carbon emissions… To suggest that downstate consumers should be less responsible for maintaining the nuclear-zero emissions attributes would undoubtedly require us to apply the same logic to allocate responsibility to reduce the harm caused by fossil-fuel combustion. Not only would that fly in the face of sound thinking regarding our responsibility to the environment, it would suggest that because most of our fossil fuel emissions are caused by downstate power generation, we would assign a higher responsibility to downstate customers for the CES based upon the local energy mix. The benefits of addressing climate change are also significant for the downstate, coastal region.”

Then came the best (or worst) part from Chairwoman Zibelman. Namely, she repeated the debunked claim that global warming causes hurricane activity and that we’d only witness more and more soon. More informed Americans, however, will recall that after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, we were told that global warming was the cause, and we’d only see more and more Katrinas as a result. Instead, the U.S. has now gone the longest stretch in history without a major hurricane.

Ooops.

Regardless, the bottom line is that New York’s CES plan is a crony capitalist, global warming alarmist boondoggle. It can’t be justified on any rationalization, least of all false global warming illogic.

Corporate inversions aren’t the problem, they’re the symptom. The problem, as Mercatus Ceneter’s Veronique de Rugy explains, is that “America’s corporate income tax rate is the highest of all developed nations.”

High U.S. Corporate Tax Rate

As de Rugy correctly concludes, “Addressing the underlying causes of inversions by reforming this tax system would not only stop inversions, it would also trim the burden on corporations, which would in turn help American companies compete better at home and abroad.”

In an interview with CFIF, Ken Girardin, Communications and Marketing Manager at the Empire Center for Public Policy, discusses New York Governor Cuomo’s so-called Clean Energy Standard, how it will force electricity ratepayers to subsidize money-losing nuclear plants and costly windmills, solar panel farms, and why taxpayers outside of New York should be concerned as well.

The political tyranny du jour among climate change alarmists is leveraging the power of the state to persecute anyone who contradicts their orthodoxy using actual facts and data. As we’ve highlighted, that abusive effort has blown up in their faces, including countersuits from targeted organizations.

There’s more good news to report: The persecutors’ effort has hit a thud in terms of public opinion as well. In an election season marked by narrow partisan divisions, a new Rasmussen survey demonstrates a rare degree of public consensus against politicians hoping to silence climate realists:

Attorneys general in 15 states are attempting to prosecute corporations and individuals that they believe are misleading the public about global warming. Their action, which critics claim is a violation of free speech, has prompted a Congressional investigation. Most voters continue to believe that the scientific debate about global warming is not over, and oppose government action against those who question it. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 69% of likely U.S. voters oppose the government investigating and prosecuting scientists and others, including major corporations, who question global warming. Just 15% favor such investigations.”

It’s rare to find a 69% to 15% public agreement on anything these days, but it’s worth celebrating that despite the constant onslaught of demonizing rhetoric from climate change alarmists, the overwhelming majority of Americans continue to reject their agenda.

As illustrated by an alarming new Gallup poll, ObamaCare has become a worsening disaster for Americans experiencing it personally. To be sure, ObamaCare has been a public disapproval disaster since its inception. But now, according to Gallup, a record number of Americans are reporting that it has personally worsened their healthcare:

Currently, 29% of Americans say Obamacare has hurt them and their family, up from 26% in May, and the highest Gallup has measured to date. Meanwhile, the percentage who say the ACA has helped their family dropped from 22% to 18%. The bulk of Americans, 51%, continue to say the law has ‘had no effect.’ As more provisions of the law have taken effect over the years, the ‘no effect’ percentage has dropped from the first reading of 70% in early 2012.”

Nancy Pelosi infamously claimed we must pass ObamaCare to find out what’s in it. Well, Americans are finding out what’s in it firsthand, and they’re liking it even less.

On the subject of Hillary Clinton, her private email server misdeeds, the Clinton Foundation pay-for-play scandal and the failure of leadership relating to Benghazi, Libya, last Friday provided what may be the best letter to the editor of the year so far, courtesy of Mary Stella of Midlothian, Virginia and The Wall Street Journal:

What a shame the late Ambassador Christopher Stevens didn’t go through Cheryl Mills or Huma Abedin when he first sought out Hillary Clinton and her State Department for increased security in Libya. Maybe they could have told him the suggested minimum contribution that would have yielded results before it was too late.

This is the proverbial smoking gun theory in reverse. Those who didn’t pay, didn’t play and didn’t live to tell about it. Disgraceful.

In his weekly address on June 6, 2009, Barack Obama promised, “If you like the plan you have, you can keep it.”

Fast-forward to September 1, 2016, under The Wall Street Journal’sheadline “Insurers’ Offerings Dwindle”:

Under intense pressure to curb costs that have led to losses on the Affordable Care Act exchanges, insurers are accelerating their move toward plans that offer limited choices of doctors and hospitals.”

Most bizarre of all? ObamaCare’s failures are prompting more and more leftists to openly advocate a complete government takeover of the healthcare system and imposing a single-payer plan. In other words, we’ve gone from promises that choice in healthcare providers won’t be impacted by ObamaCare to open advocacy of a system with zero choice whatsoever. This is how liberalism works, a slow march to mass submission.